Intel Arc B580 & B570 Launch: Here’s What You Need To Know

After weeks of rumors and leaks, it’s official – Intel has unveiled its second generation of desktop GPUs, codenamed “Battlemage”, officially as Arc B-Series. There are quite a lot of things to unpack from this announcement, including new GPUs – the Arc B580 and Arc B570 – plus pricing, AIBs, architecture, and more.

Xe2 & BMG-G21 Silicon

Starting off, the Battlemage lineup will be powered by the new Xe2 architecture, the upgrades of which over the original Xe design can be largely summarized to latency reduction and better utilization. For the BMG-G21 silicon in particular (which powers the two Arc GPUs just announced), it contains 5 Render Slices amounting to 20 Xe2-cores, 160 XMX engines, 20 Ray Tracing Units, along with a pair of Multi-Format X-coders (MFXs) responsible for video functions. All told, the BMG-G21 silicon represents a 50% improvement in performance-per-watt over its predecessor, with the Xe-core itself now performing 70% faster than before.

GPUs: Arc B580 & Arc B570

The star of the show is of course the new Arc B580 (and B570), though Team Blue is only giving the B580 GPU its first-party “Limited Edition” design (the B570 will instead be available through add-in board partners only). The new design features a flow-through cutout commonly adopted by AIBs today, plus a slightly reprofiled front that packs a pair of fans.

Intel’s official specs lists the B580 featuring 20 Xe2-cores, while the B570 has two less; the former also gets 12GB of VRAM (at the cost of bus width), while the latter has 10GB – both considered to be enough to play most modern games at reasonably high graphical settings. This is where Intel also takes a poke at NVIDIA RTX 4060’s underwhelming 8GB VRAM capacity, which is a major bottleneck for high-resolution or RT-heavy scenarios. Power is supplied through a single PCIe 8-pin connector, with TBP rated at 190W and 150W respectively.

Intel takes pride in the Arc B580’s performance capabilities, touting its ability to outpace contemporary rivals in both raster and ray tracing fronts; against the Alchemist-based predecessor (Arc A750) in 1440p resolution, the B580 is claimed to be 24% faster on average, while the same card is also 10% faster than the RTX 4060 (non-Ti). Oh, and there’s also the performance-per-dollar metric, which Intel once again claims a win. More on that in a bit.

XeSS2

On the software side of things, Intel has also announced the next iteration of its XeSS upscaling suite, now officially includes the frame generation (XeSS-FG) component as well as the latency reduction (XeLL) feature, equivalent to NVIDIA’s DLSS Frame Generation / Reflex, and AMD’s FSR3 / Radeon Anti-Lag, respectively.

One demonstration of the entire XeSS2 suite involves F1 24 in 1440p Ultra settings according to Intel’s first-party benchmarks. Here, the chipmaker claims around 2.8x – 3.9x higher framerates with both XeSS-SR (super resolution) and XeSS-FG (frame generation) active, while the XeSS-SR itself is claimed to provide an average framerate increase of 47%. On that note, Intel says developers can now integrate XeSS into DirectX 11 and Vulkan-based games, which means older games can now get the benefit of upscaling as well.

Also new is the XeLL that functions similarly to its rivals’ implementation, cutting input lag by 45% just by itself alone, and capable of neutralizing the latency penalties introduced by frame generation. Intel is also offering a driver-level option that is available to DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 games with no game integration required, and it looks like DirectX 12 are restricted likely due to concerns of accidentally triggering anti-cheats. That’s because having a driver-level option usually involves code injection, which is the reason AMD got themselves into trouble with its Anti-Lag+ feature.

Intel Graphics Software

Goodbye Arc Control, hello Intel Graphics Software: this is the new name for the software responsible for Arc GPUs moving forward. The software has gone through some rework to now provide more granular controls on overclocking, plus expanded display settings and driver-level features as well.

XMX & AI

Moving on to AI, Intel says the new Arc B580 will outperform RTX 4060 in large language models (LLMs), and the extra VRAM should come in handy in AI-intensive applications. The chipmaker has also introduced the new version of AI Playground, a suite of software that can be utilized by Arc GPUs to accelerate specific tasks.

Availability & Pricing

Finally, the pricing. With a price of just $249 (RM1,109) for the Arc B580 and $219 (RM975) for the Arc B570, it looks like Intel is pretty serious about taking AMD and NVIDIA head-on in the mainstream segment, which has been overlooked by the two major GPU powers in recent years with ever-increasing prices and little value gains. If these cards are as good as Team Blue claims, we might have a winner on our hands – at least until the other two responds in the coming weeks.

The Arc B580 will be available starting next Friday, with the Arc B570 expected to follow up in the coming January 16th, from AIB partners that include Acer, ASRock, GUNNIR, Maxsun, ONIX, and SPARKLE in 11 designs.

Pokdepinion: That value sure is enticing.